The Secret Service had to be either incredibly dumb or willfully blind regarding the hatred the city of Dallas bore towards Kennedy. On the day Kennedy landed at love field, Confederate flags flew rightside up in Dallas, while the American ones flew upside down and both Ladybird Johnson and Adlai Stevenson had been subjected to spit showers from Dallas voters, the spitters predominantly being made up of middle-class housewives.

Interesting. I somehow managed to miss that entirely at the time -- although, in my defense, I was nine. I remember that I knew there was an election on, and that my parents didn't like Kennedy; but I wasn't following the news.

Coverage of that incident with Ladybird may have swung Texas -- and the election -- to Kennedy.

My parents were just getting ready to move out of Texas at that time. The dislike of Kennedy was so common and open that when the locals told them that Kennedy had been killed, my mom thought they were just making another morbid joke. It took them some time to convince her they were serious.

Maybe because, for much of the rest of the world, getting a gun is itself not a simple thing and so it sets a minimum standard.

So is this another reason to lobby for Gun Control, so we can get some quality Magnificent Bastard-type villains who do all this intricate planning, instead of just complete and total losers who manage to get off a lucky shot?

Don't bother. I'll fish myself and save you the trouble.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kitap

I won't disagree about Roof but Loughner is mentally ill- he's a paranoid schizophrenic.

The Loughner thing always struck me as Exhibit Number I-Don't-Know-How-Many as proof to how this country is NFBSKed up when it comes to guns. Supposedly in the months before shooting Gabby Giffords, Loughner had been taking courses at Pima County Community College, but he was kicked out because his behavior was disturbing to other students and personnel. He was considered too crazy to get an education, but not too crazy to high-powered weaponry. God bless America....

The Loughner thing always struck me as Exhibit Number I-Don't-Know-How-Many as proof to how this country is NFBSKed up when it comes to guns. Supposedly in the months before shooting Gabby Giffords, Loughner had been taking courses at Pima County Community College, but he was kicked out because his behavior was disturbing to other students and personnel. He was considered too crazy to get an education, but not too crazy to high-powered weaponry. God bless America....

There's no supposedly; he did take courses at PCC until he was asked to leave.
The local news was all over that story. (Random fact: I work roughly a mile from where the shootings took place, though I was home asleep at the time.)

Lee Harvey Oswald did it, but I can understand all the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination. It seems inconceivable that a handsome, well-educated scion of a wealthy family, currently serving in the highest office in the land, gets killed by a loser Mama's boy who failed at everything he tried, except killing the president, unfortunately.

I think another big reason why there is so much disbelief regarding the JFK assassination in particular was Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald afterwards. A friend of mine watched that happen on live TV, and said that at the time he immediately assumed it had to be a set-up. That Ruby was able to walk right into a crowded police station and be in just the right spot at the right time to kill Oswald seemed incredible, and the obvious explanation -- that it was to silence Oswald before he could reveal anything about the wider conspiracy -- is certainly a plausible one.

In fact, the coincidence was quite incredible. Oswald was brought down to the parking garage later than planned owing to a number of delays; Ruby arrived only seconds before he emerged from the elevator. Ruby had wired some money at a nearby Western Union station only minutes before, so we have an accurate time-stamp -- he barely had time to walk to the station and down the ramp to the garage. Presumably, had there been one more customer ahead of him in line, or if Oswald had been brought down on schedule, Ruby would have arrived too late. And Ruby was no more a professional hit-man than Oswald, so we have history being made by two seemingly insignificant people acting independently.